Pioneering CrowdFlex project successfully completes first year of domestic flexibility trials

CrowdFlex, a NESO led Innovation project investigating the potential of domestic flexibility as a reliable grid management resource, is halfway through its two-year beta phase. The project’s annual report has been published today, detailing the progress, results and learnings to date.

CrowdFlex has successfully completed its first year of large-scale trials, with project partners OVO and Ohme EV’s customers incentivised to use their electricity flexibly by adjusting their energy usage (turn-up or turn-down) or making assets like electrical vehicles available to the grid for automated control of when to charge.

Summer trials were held between May and July 2024, and the winter phase is now underway. Utilisation and availability trials will test how different recruitment messages affect participation and will gather data to build models to help establish domestic flexibility as a more reliable resource for grid balancing, and operation.

Another significant milestone achieved is the agreement of multiparty data sharing arrangements between the project partners. The data sharing agreement is a complex process that is crucial to enable project partners to share data from trial events, to build the domestic flexibility models.

Early indications from the summer trials, and from the 3,600 participants who took part in the customer surveys, have started to reveal some initial insights:

• Customer surveys showed saving money was the most frequently stated reason for signing up to the challenge (73%), although the data from the trials didn't back this up as non-fiscal messages worked almost as well as fiscal messages.
• Exploratory analysis of event characteristics indicated that a shorter notice period may be more effective.
• Over 60% of the participants reported that they felt like they were making a difference by participating in CrowdFlex and 58% reported that they enjoyed the trial.

These insights have informed the winter trials design, which are conducting deeper and more statistically significant research. The winter trials are being held from September 2024 to April 2025 and are testing more events, multiple events a day, different messaging, and have more of a focus on low income and vulnerable customers, as well as different customer archetypes.

Read the full annual progress report

View a summary of the learnings

Sanna Atherton, CrowdFlex Project Lead, NESO

“We’re excited to be in the beta phase of the CrowdFlex project and collaborating with our industry partners on this large-scale programme. Increasing renewable energy sources brings new challenges to balancing supply and demand. CrowdFlex is building forecasting models of domestic demand and flexibility, and aims to firmly establish domestic flexibility as a reliable grid management resource, helping to reduce energy bills and support the transition to a smart, flexible and zero carbon grid.”

Elizabeth Allkins, Head of Energy Strategy, OVO 

“We've been pleased to continue to grow our learnings on CrowdFlex into the winter with two new trials launched in September. By scaling up the trial to over 60,000 people, we're able to further explore a number of factors influencing flexibility response with statistical confidence, building on insights from the summer. As NESO outlined in their CP30 report, domestic demand side response is going to be a critical enabler of a decarbonised energy system in the near future, and we are proud to be working closely with NESO to increase the industry's understanding of domestic flexibility behaviour, and support the development of models that will enable large numbers of consumers to contribute to, and benefit from, a greener grid.”

David Watson, CEO, Ohme 

“The winter trial for CrowdFlex is Ohme’s biggest ever flex trial to date, showing discernible progress and strengthening our belief in the material impact that domestic customers can have in providing grid flexibility services. Thanks to ever greater numbers of EV drivers participating, we are gaining a deeper understanding of those customers along with more reliable data modelling of their impact for the future.

With grid flexibility services estimated to save consumers £10bn per year in energy costs by 2050, and with Ohme looking to involve even more customers in 2025 with our ongoing trials, we are looking forward to further demonstrating the important role domestic customers can play in the drive towards net zero.”

CrowdFlex was awarded funding through Ofgem’s Strategic Innovation Fund, which is managed in partnership with Innovate UK. The project is being delivered for NESO by a consortium of partners: OVO, Ohme, Centre for Net Zero, ERM, AWS, National Grid Electricity Distribution and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks. NESO is also being supported by Smart Grid Consultancy Ltd, CGI, Smith Institute and Centre for Sustainable Energy.